Leave it to the combination of Big Government and Edu-babble to make things FAR more complicated, FAR more expensive, and FAR more devoid of common sense. I found this AP report over at the Concord Monitor:
NH gets $1 million for Safe Route to School
Ten New Hampshire communities are splitting almost $1 million to encourage children to walk and ride their bicycles to and from school.
The money comes from the Safe Routes to School Program and will be used for sidewalk construction, traffic calming measures and education programs.
Yeah: "to encourage children to walk and ride their bicycles to and from school." OK, my hair is grey which means that I’m old enough to remember walking to school – rode the bus for first elementary school (Huntington Elementary, through third grade), then walked or biked to the "new" elementary school (John F Kennedy Elementary in Brockton, MA) through sixth grade. Then walked to South Jr. High (a mile) which was a stone’s throw from the first elementary school that I was bussed to, and then walked to Brockton High (almost a mile) until I got my license. Sun, rain, snow – unless it was REALLY bad, I walked. Period. That was how it was done (and no, it was not uphill both ways). On sidewalks where possible, on the shoulder of roads where they were not. And some trails through the woods that established themselves as kids figured out faster way to school / back home.
Yet, today we have to encourage our kids?
Sidebar: This is the same malarky as it seems that some parents have no spine when their kids come home from school, plop themselves in front of the PC or game console, and the parents have no idea what to do. The solution is easy: shut off the power, tell them to put their play clothes on and stay outside until supper time. "GO PLAY!" were the last words I …
heard as I was undignifiedly ushered out the back door if I didn’t move fast enough. The last noise I heard was the door latch clicking shut and when I had been real petulant, the lock going "clack", which was a warning that I’d better go play with the neighborhood kids or else. It also meant that I was expected to do what I was told (although there were time when I tried to ignore the message that ‘clack’ was meant to signal – at which point I learned that "whack" also sent a signal, one that said that Mom was really ticked and that I was going to be more careful as I subsequently placed my butt in chairs for the next few days).
The message? Parents were in charge, for one. Two, kids were expected to learn to do be independent in this matter – parents were not taxis. So, knowing that the NH DOT was going to Santa Claus. Here’s part of what they had to say:
"When I visited Littleton when their program was just beginning, I was impressed to see walking school buses and rolling bike trains converge on the elementary school from multiple directions," observed John W. Corrigan, SRTS coordinator for NHDOT. "This community is an excellent example of how the initiative of volunteers and local school and municipal leaders can make a huge difference in getting kids out of private motor vehicles in favor of safe walking and bicycling."
I’ve ridden buses. I’ve ridden bikes. WHAT the heck is a ‘walking school bus" or a "rolling bike train"? Of COURSE – Edubabble! I had to dive in and figure this out:
A walking school bus is a group of children walking to school with one or more adults…It can be as informal as two families taking turns walking their children to school to as structured as a route with meeting points, a timetable and a regularly rotated schedule of trained volunteers.
the bicycle train, in which adults supervise children riding their bikes to school.
We’re talking not just $1 million dollars but $1M for 5 years! For WHAT? To teach parents how to volunteer to watch their kids either walking or riding a bike to school? My GOD! What idiocy! And according to Government, this has to be under government tutelage:
At the community level, SRTS efforts are organized by a local task force that brings together school and municipal leaders, parents, children, representatives of community organizations and anyone else interested in the program. Their task is to assess local conditions and find ways to make improvements.
What did we ever do without Government?? While there were times, as described above, that Mom kicked us out of the house (knowing that we needed the play time and that she needed the break), she (and all of the other parents in the neighborhood) innately seemed to know that part of her responsibility was to teach us, her children, how to walk to school – the streets to take, the side of the road to take, and walking with all of the neighborhood kids in a clump. She and the other moms walked us to the schools several times until we could all prove we knew the way, and made sure that older kids took charge of the younger ones (see "whack" above). Ditto with riding bikes – often, she’d get on her bike to take all the surrounding kids for "bike rides" to the schools which had the goal (and result) of us all knowing the way and the safe traffic rules.
No one ever "trained" her, or Mrs. Sylvester across the screen or Mrs. Comeau next door or Mr. Beleveder down the street, so forth or so on. All of the adults watched during the school transit times…and kids were expected to behave or "Momnet" would flash into action – and we’d get yelled at all the way home. There were no "I’m here from the Government to teach you how to escort your own kids to the Government schools". There were no social workers to running workshops and creating powerpoints on this (like THIS one done for PR reasons – REALLY, a Powerpoint????). And it didn’t cost $5 Million either – it was called "responsibility in raising your children" – expected to be done by parents.
After all, that’s who the kids belonged to back then – the parents. And I will tell you, I truly wished, at times, that the door lock was fastened so as to delay that fateful time of being under the gaze of my Mom to face the consequence of my deciding to violate some "rule" of "Momnet".
Oh, Skip, times have changed – you can’t DO that anymore! Really? Why? "Well, both parents work nowadays – nobody is home". No, sport – my Mom was a single mom but she made sure that her responsibilities were fulfilled.
This has gone overly long already, so I will just mention that this is also a bad case of "free money"; money from the Feds taken from people in the States to give to yet other people in other states for purposes that the local folks won’t bother to fund for themselves. Even with the vast debt we are seeing, it still seems to be business as usual in taking this ‘free money"(which is never free as somebody paid it in taxes and it ALWAYS has strings attached. Trust me, I know this as we have a ‘sidewalk to nowhere’ and several other structures in my hamlet that were "free" from the Feds that have turned out to be other than free over the long term.
But really, ask yourself – do we really have to train parents to do these things? And for Government to be taking credit for things that used to be considered a family matter?
Sad….
